• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

King of the Hill

TheGuyWithTheTacoma

Well-Known Member
I was only eight years old when King of the Hill debuted, and I'd say I watched it for the first time when I was in middle school, in about 2001 or 2002. My mom did not like me watching it very much, but she eventually got over it. In 2004, my parents bought a brand new Honda Odyssey with a DVD entertainment system, and I started buying complete season sets of King of the Hill and The Simpsons on DVD to watch on long trips. I unfortunately have not seen any of my KotH DVD box sets since 2007-2008, but they recently started streaming reruns on Hulu and I've been binge-watching it there.

There are two reasons I started a thread about King of the Hill...

  • I've been a huge fan for going on twenty years now!
  • It recently occurred to me that the show's main character, Hank Hill, may be on the spectrum. I believe he shares a lot of traits with me.
My cousin, who is NT and became a school psychologist as a result of growing up with me and also enjoyed King of the Hill, agrees that Hank shares a lot of my traits and behavioral quirks, and may very well be on the spectrum. I talked with my mom (also NT) just minutes ago, and she also agrees with me.

The series has a semi-floating timeline. The series first aired in 1997 and season finale aired in 2010, so the earliest episodes take place in the late 1990s while later episodes obviously take place in the 2000s. Hank's birthdate has been shown as anywhere from 1953 to the late 1950s, and his age has been anywhere from his later thirties to his early 40s, making him a baby boomer. This means he was probably never diagnosed if he is on the spectrum.

Things I have in common with Hank Hill that are typical traits of people on the spectrum:

  • Hank is very rigid and set in his ways about many things.
  • Hank has very strict morals and is very big on following the rules, even ones that he may not necessarily like.
  • Hank is very uncomfortable about being touched (hugging, kissing, etc) by anyone except his wife and certain family members.
  • Hank is very sexually conservative, but does have a wild/kinky side in that respect (most notably when he and his wife Peggy had sex in the bathroom on a train in one episode).
  • Hank is not the least bit promiscuous and as far as I know his wife Peggy is the only woman he's slept with.
  • He is very OCD about taking care of his house and vehicles.
  • Hank seems to be naive about a lot of things that most people take for granted.
 
Last edited:
Things I have in common with Hank Hill that have absolutely nothing to do with being on the spectrum:

  • Hank drives a pickup truck and prefers pickup trucks to just about all other vehicles.
  • Hank is just as obsessed with his pickup truck as I am with mine (perhaps even more as he prefers to do all routine maintenance himself and scoffs at the idea of a mechanic so much as touching his truck).
  • Hank shows more affection towards his dog than he does towards certain people
  • Hank is a registered republican and has political views that would be considered conservative, but he has respect for certain old school democrats.
  • Hank knows how to drive a stick shift.
  • Hank's father was in the military.
  • Hanks tolerates all sorts of nonsense from family/friends and strangers alike, and somehow manages to keep his sanity.
  • By his own admission, Hank does not have an anger problem, but rather an idiot problem.
  • When someone messes with Hank's loved ones (wife, son, niece, friends, dog), he can go from the nicest guy in the world to the Incredible Hulk in a matter of seconds.
  • Hank's friends and family members find his rigidity and high moral standards annoying until he ends up having to bail them out of certain situations.
 
Last edited:
Things that Hank Hill has done or said that have not, and more than likely would not, happen to me:

  • Hank's father is a terrible person in many ways, and I find it amazing at times that Hank did not turn out like him.
  • Hank generally stays on the right side of the law, but has been arrested a few times throughout the series for minor violations or even as the result of a misunderstanding (I've been stopped by the police for taking pictures, and I've been pulled over a few times, but I've never been arrested and have no criminal record).
  • One of the more notable such incidents occurred in a 2009 episode when Hank got arrested for DWI, on his riding mower! Hank's rich and well-connected boss used his personal attorney to ensure that Hank did not lose his driver's license over the fiasco; As punishment, Hank was banned from using his riding mower for six months and had to speak to high school students about the dangers of drunk driving (I don't drive drunk).
  • I have been using a computer since the early 1990s, but Hank did not use a computer or even get the internet in his house until 2000, when he was probably 40 (By comparison, my family probably got the internet for the first time in the late 1980s or early 1990s and I was using the internet by the time I was 5, though only in a limited and closely monitored capacity).
  • Hank played football in middle school and high school, and loves watching it to this day (I never really got into sports).
  • Hank is a very "buy American" type of person, even preferring to keep his old American-made TV running with secondhand parts from yard sales instead of buying a "Japanese one" (Actually, my TV was made by an American company, Vizio, in California; My Toyota truck was also built in California; However, I buy items based on their quality and not where they're made).
 
I love King of the Hill! I always thought I wouldn't like it so I never gave it a shot, but then a year or so ago, I ended up binging the whole show really rapidly. It was before I even knew what autism was so I wasn't able to pick up on anything like that; I'll have to rewatch the show sometime.
 

New Threads

Top Bottom